Will's Mom's Cottage

We went from the Double J ranch to Will's mom's cottage up near New Era, North of Muskegon. It's a beautiful place, in the woods with access to Lake Michigan. We spent a few hours at the beach, burying each other in the sand and swimming. Lake Michigan was suprisingly warm. We roasted hot dogs over the camp fire and are making s'mores later tonight. The kids and I have jad fun hiking in the woods behind the house, up a giant hill. It's so peaceful here, I love it.

Wild West Show

We went to the Western Stars Wild West show at the ranch tonight. They wrangled cows, cracked whips and like any good wild west show had dancing girls in tight outfits. The kids loved it.(The horses, not the girls)

Double J Ranch

We got to the Double J Ranch around 2, checked in and toured around the place. It's a dude ranch with horse back riding, fishing, water slides, petting zoos and kids crafts. We're staying in this cabin, which has a cool loft for the kids and a huge jacuzzi and king size bed for Cathie and I. There was a cowboy stunt show this afternoon and a big western show tonight after the pig roast.

A friend of mine, Erik, turned me onto the fact that the show Wife Swap on ABC is looking for a technology-savvy family to do a swap with. I sent them an e-mail telling them we're willing. Never really checked with Cathie, but I figured I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I've only seen the show a couple of times, and it mostly consists of being stuck with people who are exactly the opposite of you. The opposite of me... that'd be someone who can't dance, can't sing and isn't funny, I guess. One odd thing on the web site: "Schedule a wife swap party..." Not sure they understand the double-entendre here.

Emily (she's four) is the only one of our kids that have been big into imaginary friends. One of her most prominent friends is Shaina and her lesser friend, the imaginary monkey. There was another imaginary friend that died on the swing in the back yard. Anyways, we were cleaning up her room today, putting her CD's back in the cases and she told us to stop. She explained to us that she likes to keep them mixed up in the cases because otherwise Shaina will find them and break them. We're either dealing with a very active imagination or poltergeist style demon posession. I'm hoping it's the former.

So Cathie sent me out to the store to pick up some groceries, and I was impressed. When Cathie gives me a grocery list, she actually puts the items on the list in the order they are in the aisles as I go through the store. I guess I'm easily impressed.

We (read: mostly Cathie) have been working to get ready for vacation tomorrow. Cathie's got a strange vacation preparation routine which involves staying up all night the night before getting ready. Doesn't matter how far in advance she starts, she always stays up all night. To top things off, we're getting the house cleaned up for one final open house before we take the house of the market. We don't want the kids to change schools mid-year, so we've decided to take it off the market until next spring. We're heading out to the West side of the state, staying at the Double J ranch tomorrow night and then staying at Will's Mom's cottage on Lake Michigan for a couple of days until we head out to Michigan Adventure Amusement Park on Tuesday. I head out to Boston on Wednesday and Thursday and then back all of the following week. Jon was going to go to the park with us but because of the latest with Beth's pregnancy, he's heading back to Memphis early.

I talked to my brother Jon tonight and apparently him and his wife Beth had quite a day. They went into the Doctor's office for a check-up on the baby as her due date approaches. Apparently the baby hadn't grown much since the last visit so they were concerned about things. They talked to them about doing a C-section immediately, but instead they went to a specialist who confirmed that the baby was a little smaller than it should be, but still doing fine. They've got a C-section scheduled for August 25th, two days after Beth takes her board exams. She's been studying for these things for 9 months and didn't want to have to wait another year to get them completed. It's a two part test, the first part being two days long, and the next part taking place at the end of October. I've taken tests in college hung-over, but never taken one two days away from giving brith.

I was laughing hard reading some of the T-Shirts at bustedtees.com

My sister Susan sent me this image she grabbed from the lego web site. Wouldn't you too like to help protect and preserve their brand. While you're at it, please don't say "Making a Xerox." Please say it making a photocopy.

Not sure why you'd get this tattoo. Not sure why my brother Jon would get it.

I had breakfast with a friend of mine Andy who I hadn't seen in a long time. We've been friends over 10 years and I think the last place I'd seen him was at a wedding he played guitar at. It was good catching up, and eating at the Cracker Barrel, which is full of country goodness.

The whole family went to see Charlie and the Choclate Factory tonight during $2 tuesdays at the South Lyon cinema. The good news: It's only $2. The bad news, it's packed, the seats are horribly uncomfortable, but hey, it's $2. Once I got over beeing creeped out by Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka character, i liked the movie. As much as Tim Burton has bad-mouthed the original movie, he seemed to have pimped a lot of the visuals from it. His story line is more true to the original book, and I liked the fact that Willy Wonka doesn't do any weird songs, I liked the explanation on why Willy is the way he is, and the better ending with the elevator. At least Gene Wilder didn't remind me so much of Michael Jackson when he played Wonka.

Peerflix.com

I've been using Peerflix.com for a couple weeks, per my previous post on the site. Peerflix is a peer-to-peer mail-based physical DVD trading service. You list your DVD's on the site and people can request them. When they do, you get an e-mail and a link to print a mailing label. You print the label, stick it in one of the envelopes they send you and send it to the person. As you do this, you accumulate credits which you can in turn request DVD's from the person. I've sent out a bunch and gotten a bunch so far. You pay $.99 for the transaction to Peerflix. Not a bad way to go.

This is an interesting article on A Day in the Life of a Nigerian Internet Scammer. A while back I thought it would be funny to correspond with one of these guys to see how far it would go. It stopped being funny when I must have been added to some kind of mass-sucker list that caused me to receive a bunch of these things, most of which weren't caught by my spam-engine.

I've got a day filled with eight hours worth of conference calls, which can be painful. Thanks to my Plantronics Wireless Office Headset and my wireless connection, i can sit on my deck and work all morning. I love working virtually.

Thanks to Dan for this article on Bono around Salty Dogma:

Bono puts it really well: "At the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one," explains Bono. "And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that. . . . Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff."

This Sumo Tube looks like a blast, not to mention having two of these behind a boat crashing into each other.

On Saturday Cathie and I went over to Brad's and spent the day with a bunch of friends hanging out on the lake with Brad/Joanne, Ted/Sherri, Dana/Eli and Will, . Brad's got a new wave runner that is ridiculously fast. It's got 230 HP and goes 70MPH in about 5 seconds. That's as powerful as Brad's previous ski boat. It's like riding a crotch-rocket - gets real scary, real quickly. We got both of these huge tubes going out simultaneously and were launching back and forth between the tubes. We found that when everyone gets to one tube, the second tube would go airborne and launch about 10 to 15 feet in the air overhead and then crash down on top of us. Dangerous but fun. You can watch the pictures here.

We spent some time discussing Brad's death, and Ted decided to re-enact Brad's funeral, including a Will Farrelesque singing of "Dust in the Wind", per Old School, which you can watch here.


From there, we went to Bob's house for another Bahama Bob's bash. Bob built a huge Tiki Hut in his back yard by his pool and puts on great parties. We hung out there until about 12:30 when we called it a night.

Sunday was all about rest. After church we took some naps and Emily and I hung out in her wading pool. The water was right out of the hose and freezing cold. Emily had me playing horsy, crawling around in the ice cold water as she sat on my back, equally cold. Mark and Diana came over for dinner last night with the kids and the girls put on a big dance extravaganza show for us. They rehersed a bunch of dance numbers, put on lots of make-up and we got to watch the big show. The boys wanted nothing to do with watching their sisters dance, but Emily dug it.

Dave Lewis

Nate and I went to my friend Kirk's performance training center to hear a number of people from the Detroit Red Wings organization talk about athletics and performance. Dave Lewis (The Wing's head coach until a few weeks ago), Piet Van Zant their head trainer and their equipment manager, Paul Boyer all spoke. We heard lots of good hockey stories about the different players, including a good one from when Kirk used to be the Wing's head trainer: During his first game ever as their lead trainer, he was hoping no one go down on the ice where he'd have to go out on the ice and potentially embaress himself, falling on the ice. A player went down, Kirk went out on the ice trying to figure out what was wrong with the player. The player told him to get closer when he told him 'Kirk, welcome to the team. You're on TV, you're parents are getting some good pictures, so make it look good.' The guy was fine, but figured he'd indoctrinate Kirk on his first day. Nate enjoyed it and we got autographs in the end.

Just Good 'Ol Boys

Will and I went to see Dukes of Hazard last night after his going away party at work. The movie was average with the highlight being Jessica Simpson, who was suprisingly good. I grew up watching every episode of the show and probably went in with too high of expectations.

Instead of going to the gym during lunch, it was such a nice day that i decided to go biking instead. I went to Island Lake and road the Blue trail. It's a ten mile ride, a nice 45 minute ride that's mostly nice, flat out stuff where you can go fast. About 10% of the trail is somewhat technical stuff, with some nasty sand in spots. It was a perfect day for riding. Midway through, I stopped at the Lake where Cathie, Kris, Susan, Laura (Jon's sister-in-law), Jon and the kids were swimming and said hi. Midway through the ride I saw the largest gardener snake I've ever seen sunning itself on the trail. I tried to bunny-hop over it, but I'm not sure my back wheel cleared it. Oops.

About a month ago I received a promotion within my company and as a result they highlighted me within a recent newsletter. Someone called me a while back, asked me a bunch of questions and then wrote an article about me based on that interview. The article was nice, but the picture that they used was a creepy looking executive headshot that they'd taken a while back. By posting the article, I'm opening myself up to tremendous mockery by my brothers - but hey, they live dull lives vicariously through me, so what the heck:

For those of you who know Dave Kurt, he is a hardworking individual with a great sense of humor. Dave has been working for Xerox over nine years, in
various parts of the company that have led up to what is now known as BPS, starting out in what was then, Professional Document Services. Dave is now a Managing Principal, leading the BPS Healthcare and Public Sector team. Dave believes that his most significant accomplishment while at Xerox has been the opportunity to recruit a number of employees who have in turn had a significantly positive impact on the future of Xerox Corporation.

Born and raised in Michigan, Dave resides in the metro Detroit area with his wife and three children. He shares a passion for extreme sports and music. Last summer he played an instrumental part in overseeing a rock concert. As one of the producers of this festival, he worked to bring in over 3000 kids and 75 bands that performed across seven stages. Along with Dave’s drive for excitement is his intensity towards the betterment of today’s youth. Much of Dave’s time is spent mentoring young adults. Dave currently is on the Board of Directors for Project 311 (www.project311.org), which is an organization committed to working with middle school kids to ensure a positive future. Along with Project 311, Dave also leads Fusion, a middleschool youth group at his local church. Dave strongly believes in the guidance of today’s youth and understands the need to acknowledge them. He feels that they are often forgotten and believes that with direction they can be successful under any circumstance. Described by his peers as high energy, passionate, authentic and loyal, Dave knows how to spice things up here at XGS.

This is funny. A HALO version of Napoleon Dynamite.

Dammit, I can't believe my church didn't make this list of the Top 50 most influential churches.

Kansas City Wizards Soccer Game

I'm in Kansas City today visiting a customer of ours. The customer is hosting the local professional soccer team, the Kansas City Wizards, playing in a tournament. It's 94 degrees and sweltering without a breeze, with sweat dripping down my back. A friend of mine, Sara, got us tickets and filled us in on what was going on in the game. We headed over to her house on the lake afterwards for a ride on the pontoon boat aftewards. We floated around the lake for a while and never got the boat started. I'm heading back tomorrow morning on the 6AM flight, and I'm in town all next week.

Two kid stories:
We had a showing the other day and we were just finishing cleaning up as they came. The kids were outside playing when we answered the door, let them in and left. I found out the next day from our realtor that Madeline talked to the potential buyers. She was kind enough to tell them that we needed to cancel our showing and that we'd raised the price of the house to $7 million.

Last night Cathie and I were sitting out on the deck reading when Emily came down and asked for a glass of milk and we told her no. That night when we went in to check on Emily we rubbermaid with milk in it. I guess it wasn't a glass.....

I want one of these water balloon launchers! To be able to launch multiple water balloons over 300 feet seems to have huge potential. At camp one year ("One time at band camp") one of the leaders had his retina get detached after getting hit in the eye with a water balloon from one of the slingshots.

I've been listening to a series from Mark Driscoll at Mars Hills church in Seattle on Ephesians. It's pretty in-depth - I'm 5 hours in and half way through the second chapter. It's causing me to re-rack my perception of God and Justice. Mars Hills does a nice job putting their messages out there via podcasts and BitTorrents. I was a little dismayed to see that they're worship band is named Team Strike Force, which is the team name I use in every team-based situation. My guess is that they stole this from me. I won't sue them though, they're a church.

With Jon and Beth moving down to Tennessee for Beth's fellowship at St. Jude's Hospital, we don't get to see Beth as often as we have to see Jon. Apparently, she is actually pregnant, as these 34 week pictures will attest to:

This is a great collection of articles from Defcon, the annual computer hackers convention that takes place out in Vegas. One of the funnier articles is this story:

At DEFCON there's a wall with a projection of username and passwords (some of the password that is). When you use any wireless here, it's safe to assume that all the packets are being captured and if you're foolish, you logged in to webmail, pop, AIM, etc...DEFCON is reality concentrated in to one spot- when you see your friend's password on the wall, and a big sheep go by, it's a clever reminder.

This one too:

One the coolest projects I've seen so far at DEFCON was the kegbot, a linux based keg that dispenses beer as long as you have an iButton key. The system keeps track of who you are, how much you're drinking and in team mode- where you rank. the Kegbot crew built and deployed a kegbot on site at DEFCON, we were lucky enough to get there and document the building of it!

Funny interview from MTV.COM with Kyle Glass and Black Jack of Tenacious D about their new movie Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny. Watch the video on the page as well. Warning: If you don't listen to the D or have ever watched their show on HBO, you'll find this moronic.

This take on Ah-Ha's "Take On Me" video from the Family Guy is hilarious.

I was talking to Clint, a friend at work who was vacationing down in Bermuda last week. He and his wife stayed at Michael Douglas's Ariel Sand's resort. He was hanging out at the pool bar having drinks and ended up talking to and buyin ga beer, a guy who turned out to be Michael Douglas's business manager. He had no idea who this guy was until he mentioned that he worked for "Mr. Douglas". Clint responded "Mr. Douglas" who? The guy explained who he worked for, and ended up introducing them to Michael Douglas and Katherine Zeta Jones, who were there for their kid's birthday party. His business manager made a resturant reccomendation and reservation for them, and to their suprise not only offered up Michael Douglas's driver, but ended up picking up the tab at the very exclusive resturant as well. Just goes to show that it never hurts to buy a guy a beer.

Very interesting article on hacking hotel's systems via the in-room TVs.

Ann arbor

Ted and I spent a lot of time concincing people we weren't a couple. Ted had been whining for a while that he hadn't gotten fair mention in my blog, so I guess he can consider hanging out with me "blog-worthy" (reference to Seinfeld "Spongeworthy").

This street performer was out doing a tribute to Michael Jackson, break dancing like nothing you've ever seen....from a crack head. Who really wants to impersonate Michael Jackson these days? It's up there with impersonating O.J. Simpson.

Apparently Richard Marx was in Ann Arbor as well, complete with his curly mullett.

We went to Ann Arbor tonight with Ted and Sherry for dinner and ran into Kenny G, sans saxaphone. We ate at a pretty good Tex-Mex resturant called the Prickly Pear on Main Street. We hung out after that at a sidewalk bar and people-watched. Amazing the kind of celebrities you see out there.

Had a bunch of guys over to play cards last night, in the ususal spot - the garage, for the cigars. Joe, Bob, Terry, Eli, Dan and Mark and myself played. Will was in Honolulu, Brad decided that he's not very good and shouldn't play any more and Ted was having his tenth going away party somewhere. We all had our sunglasses on, trying to be Chris Moneymaker at the poker table, I guess. It was a true South Lyon style poker party - played in a garage, with Guns and Roses blaring from the Stereo as we ate pork rinds (okay, we didn't eat pork rinds). We wrapped up late, around 1:30 after I'd won almost nothing all night. At one point when I was down to nothing and there was a huge pot, I had a suited Jack Queen and went all in. I caught the seven I needed on the river and was gathering up the chips as Joe was kind enough to point out that the dealer hadn't burned a card prior to flopping the river. I was out, Bob had a huge pile. Bob was the big winner that night, which usually happens - between him and Eli typically winning.

I worked today from Cathie's parents house in Dewitt - the beauty of a virtual office. The kids swam while I worked and took breaks in the pool. It rained on and off during the day, but the kids swam anyways. Got a bunch of guys coming over tonight to play cards. Should be fun.

Updated: Check out this video of me tossing Madeline in the air. There were a couple of times where she did 1 and a half flips, which resulted in a face first belly smacker. In hindsight, it looks kind of dangerous. Madeline wanted to keep doing it over and over until we got it right. I explained to her that it would probably end with her getting hurt, and she was okay with that. So we kept going.

My boss Anne Mulcahy made the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world at #6. She deserves it. Good to see Carly Fiona no longer eclipsing her. I'm nowhere on the list. Probably cause I'm a dude. That seems like discrimination to me.

I spent this afternoon in a fairly akward situation. A friend of mine who's had a chain of horrible circumstances in his life had things topped off by having to have hemroid surgery today. I drove him there and was there in the recovery room when he woke up from the anestesia. When he woke up, I asked him how he was and his first words were "I'd rather be in Philidelphia", which were Reagan's first words when he came out of surgery after he was shot. He was pretty drugged up he was hilarious. He was asking the nurse if they'd taken any before and after pictures of the whole thing. We were dying laughing joking about this stuff. The nurses were pretty sure my friend and I were a couple, which wasn't helped by the fact that he was staying at my house during his recovery and that I was responsible for him during the whole thing. I was squirming as the surgeon came in and described the procedure and what he'd found. The guy was British and really liked to use the term anus, pronounced "Enis" by him. The nurse was then describing to me the care and maintenance of "the wound" and I tried to make it very clear that I was taking no part in any part of the "wound maintenance" and that he was really on his own there. The whole discussion of the pros and cons of whether wearing maxi-pads or cotton would work best to catch the drainage was a lot of fun to hear.

Reason #134 I love my Treo Phone:
A friend of mine is having outpatient surgery today and needed transportation and a place to crash afterwards, so I'm sitting here in the hospital with my laptop, able to work online through my laptop, connecting online for free via PDANet and my Treo phone.

Cool new Treo app called KMap that allows you to lookup and view google maps on your phone.

Mack turned me on to a great podcast - TWiT - This week in Tech. It's the guys from TechTV - Leo LaPorte, Patrick Norton, John Dvorak and others sitting around a table talking about the latest in technology. These guys are the best of the best in this area and it's pretty interesting banter.

Good article from Dvorak on how Google is beating out Microsoft in terms of innovation and leadership.

After writing my previous self-righteous rant about church shopping this morning, I sat down and happened to be reading Romans and stumbled across this in Romans 2:

Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. ²But God isn't so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you've done.

³You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? ⁴Or did you think that because he's such a nice God, he'd let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he's not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.

Always amazed at how God humbles me in this kind of stuff.

This is an interesting article that I can relate to on why younger generations (I'm lumping myself into this group) are becoming disenfranchised with the mega-churches that are out there. I just have no desire to be a part of a church of 20,000 people, like the one in our town. Something that size, that shiny on the outside, that over-produced holds nothing for me. Half of it is the size of the show (which they're damn good at putting on) that turns me off, half of it is the lack of depth in community. I think I'd rather be deeply connected. On the flip side, I know people go to mega-churches, love it and are flourishing. Good for them.

I continue to watch people "check out" other churches and have a tough time getting my hands around this. The whole church shopping deal amazes me. Some people migrate to the "mega-churches" out there looking for something that can entertain and look healthy on the surface, others to hop from church to church looking for one that "feeds" them with dynamic teaching or "great music". In and of themselves, I guess they're all good things. I'm just not sure how heavily to weigh them in the overall definition of what a church should be and how to "shop" for one. How can you really know a church, it's heart, it's people without digging in and sticking with it for 6 months? I hear people say, "I've found a great church, the teaching is awesome and the worship band was great." Ok, what about their heart towards the poor and hurting, the unlovable? How do they align with the community described in Acts 2:42-47 or the love described in 1 Corinthians 13?

We've got lots of big churches in our area that look just like part of their community - the rich, white and upper class part. That's just not for me. I love the fact that my church looks like where I live. South Lyon is full of mobile home parks, single moms and broken families along with upper class families as well. We've got a church that looks that looks like our community and I dig that. If you were church shopping and you came to my church for the first time, I'm just not sure what you'd see. The music is ok most of the time, our teaching goes from great to mediocre and the people at our church love others really well ("sometimes too well, we've had two past affairs" - quote from one of our jr. high kids at camp during one of the sessions). You've got a group of people doing the best they can with what they have, but the show doesn't compete with the mega-church down the road. Should we just sit that as consumers, relying on a church to fill us up and entertain us? If it doesn't fill me on a given Sunday or a given month even, do I high tail it out of there and move on to the next one? How do I weight my connectedness to the church in there? How important is how they love each other? Do I walk out on my famliy when they don't entertain me or teach me at a family get together and go find a new one? How about when you have too many crazy uncles in the family, do you go find a new family?

Monkeys flipping people off are always funny to me.

My brother Jon is blogging. Will and I created the blog originally as a joke, but now Jon has taken it on and is updating it. We'll see how long it lasts.

Check out these pictures of the new Motorola Q vs. the Treo 650.

A friend of mine, Mark Hamilton, took this picture at a recent church picnic and tweaked it to create this very cool layered effect.

One of things that sucks about working out of my home is the lack of office supplies, and the lack of co-workers to shoot pencils through. Check out this site for creating weapons out of office supplies - OfficeGuns.

My iPod's working again. Apparently it wasn't related to me dropping it, but more of a firmware bug. Once the battery wore down it reset and I was able to recharge it, update the firmware and it's working fine.

I'm home all week, going to Calgary and Kansas City next week.

Last movie seen in the theatre: Wedding Crashers
Last movie rented: Team America
Last CD's purchased: Coldplay - X&Y, Foo Fighters - In Your Honor
Current razor: Gilette Mach 3
Current online photo service: Snapfish
Last book finished: Hollywood Tough, Steven Cannell
Last kind of beer drank: Bell's Oberon
Last wing's eaten: BW3's
Last video game played: Fantastic Four - GameCube

You?

Reality Shows not worth watching:

• Being Bobby Brown
• Hogan Knows Best
• Brat Camp
• The 70's House
  

If you don't watch the show Best Week Ever, you're missing out on the funniest half hour of television out there. Other than that, not much on this summer. A few other shows we watch regularly that have new episodes right now:

• Real World (Jury's still out on this season, but it's decent so far)
• Daily Show with John Stewart
• Family Guy (I'm still not sold on this show, but my brother Jon keeps telling me it's genius. There are some hilarious parts in it and great obscure references that keep me coming back. I never watched it but all the press about it being brought back forced me to take another look at it. It's a lot raunchier than The Simpsons and almost always crosses the line. Kinda like hanging out with Brad).
  
• Punk'd/Made/True Life (Quality MTv stuff)
• Random HD Net Concerts (I don't care who the band is, it looks so good in HD)
• I Want a Famous Face (Messed up people who obsess after famous people and get plastic surgery to look like them)
  

Here's a parenting dilemma: My 8 year old son purposely goes up and rips one in his sister's face. She hits him, hard. We have a standing punishment in our family if you hit someone, but frankly, I'd of done the same think in her shoes. Probably a bad parenting move, but I explained to her that sometime's whacking your brother is worth the consequences you face. Maybe a little too honest. I'm sure it'll come back to bite me someday.

Emily decided to give herself a make over. Just not sure what to think of this picture - Cute or Scary?

After church, the kids had friends over. Maddie and her friend Sam dressed up exactly alike, because they're girls, and that's what they do, I guess. Nate and his friend Brian and did guy stuff, like build a fort back in the woods, shoot his BB gun and play basketball. I'm ready for a nap.

Friday was a rough day. I stayed up all night and all day in order to readjust my clock. I worked most of the day half-concious and then hung out with Cathie and the kids the rest of the day. Friday night I went over to Ted's house for his 4th going away party to spend a little while with Mark, Brad, Ted, Eli and Will.

Saturday was moving day for Mom and Dad. I went to bed around 11:30 and got up around 7, feeling pretty rested. Nate and I went to my parents for move number 2. We'd already moved hundreds of boxes out, so most of what was left was furniture. We had all of the furniture loaded up and ready to go by 10:30 and were on our way. Moving is a big deal in my family, so everyone was there, including our extended family of Will, Mike, big Nate. Last night Cathie, myself and my brothers Jon, Dan, Will and I went to go see Wedding Crashers. I laughed so hard I almost wet myself. As Will said, everything that comes out of Vince Vaughn's mouth is genius. Jon stayed over and left early this morning back to Memphis.

I posted my Honolulu pictures online here. Nothing real interesting - mostly just scenic stuff and friends drinking mai-tais.

Good article on how being ultraconnected contributes to our CPA (Continual Partial Attention):

The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of "In Praise of Slowness," is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.

Honore, who cited the estimate of an interruption every three minutes, acknowledges that he would not part with his laptop or phone. But he adds that "it's possible to get too much of a good thing. As a society, that's where we are at the moment."

I got in this morning around 6am on a pretty uneventful flight. I finished reading Harry Potter and watching the Scrubs Season 1 episodes. As a side note, Scrubs has got to be one of the funniest, smartest shows ever written. I'm not a big sitcom fan - I can't think of any that I watch, except this show. Anyways, I couldn't sleep on the plane, so I figured I'll try and stay up all day, go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight and hopefully have my internal clock back in sync tomorrow. My parents are finally moving from their home tomorrow so Will, Kevin's brother-in-law Nate, my brothers and Mike will all be there. Moving is a big family event for us and this will be no exception. Dan will be the master packer, as usual.

Flying into Seattle I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever behind Mt Ranier. Throughout the entire flight the guy next to me picked at a blister on his big toe while reading Japanese porn.

Cool new service I signed up for called Peerflix.com. I read about it in this article from engadget. The gist of it is this:

It can be described on a basic level as eBay meets Netflix. Peerflix resembles many online DVD stores, but it neither rents nor sells DVDs. Rather, it depends on a community of users willing to trade DVDs they have for DVDs they want. There are no subscription fees. Peerflix charges a 99-cent transaction fee and senders are responsible for the postage charge of 37 cents for the mailers that the company distributes. Behold the $1.36 DVD.

Packing up all my crap I came to the realization that my life is connected to rechargable crap. When I travel, I carry chargers for:

• My Laptop
• My Digital Camera
• My Bluetooth headset
• My Cell Phone
• My iPod

My iPod's broke. It dropped onto the carpet from about 2 feet and then stopped working. I guess I never realized how often I use this thing. I have my speakers in my hotel room, not doing me any good. I have no music with me at all and I'm going nuts.

Best Headline Ever.

A movie review for Charlie and the Choclate factory was titled "Depp's "Choclate Factory" Has Tasty Opening".

The time change is catching up to me. I started my day at 4am on con calls and was in meetings until about 6 when I finally hit a wall. I'm out having Sushi tonight right on the beach at Sansei, a place Will turned me on to. Some of the best Sushi I've ever had - lots of specialty rolls. We saw a great sunset tonight, but again, seeing a sunset without Cathie being there to experience it with me is bittersweet.

I got up at 6AM local time (12PM EST) and headed up to the North Shore with a friend of mine from work Greg, and his wife, Kerry. Greg and I have become good friends over the past 6 years we've worked together over the past 7 years and Cathie and I hung out with both of them the quite a bit at President's Club. On our way to the North Shore (where all of the big surfing competitions take place with the big 50 foot waves), we stopped at the Dole Pinapple Plantation which Will had reccomended to me. It was worth about 15 minutes to see where pinapples come from, but I don't need to spend $15 on a Dole Pinapple shirt, shoes, knife or slippers.

We headed up around the Island and stopped at some of the beaches on the way and saw some amazing stuff, watching kids do some awesome stuff on boogies boards. The scenery was breathtaking the whole way with mountains on one side and this amazing blue water on the other. I came back and hung out at the beach for a while while another friend of mine, Bill and his family showed up. Greg, Kerry, Shawn and Bill and his kids hung out in the ocean for a while, running into a guy who looked just like the American Idol William Hung.

I know you may have heard from others how hard it is to work in Hawaii. I guess I'm just not there yet. Sure the 6 hour time difference is tough to adjust to and communicate with the outside world but it's an opportunity that few people ever have and I'm enjoying every second of it. The one thing that sucks is not having my wife here with me. When you have someone whose soul is connected to yours, it makes it tough to enjoy a new experience without that person at your side to experience it with you. In the back of mind, there's always this thought of "Wow, I wish Cathie were here to experience this with me". I just don't enjoy stuff in the same way without Cathie by my side. I think that's part of what being married to your soulmate is all about and I wouldn't change it for the world.

This is a cool site that will do free document to PDF conversion for you online. You can upload an office document and receive a PDF back. The site is PDFOnline.com

At breakfast this morning they offer spam as part of the buffett. Apparently, Hawaii is the leading consumer of Spam in the world. They serve it at McDonalds and even offer spam rolls at the sushi places here. My wife, a big consumer of spam as a kid, would be right at home here.

I made it past 10PM/4AM. We grabbed dinner at the hotel and then Newton and I walked up and down the main strip and grabbed some Mai Tai's at one of the local places we'd heard about. There were street performers all up and down the street, everything from guys painted silver andpeople dressing up their dogs. On our way back we ran into a group of guys free-style rapping on the street. Now Newton comes from souther Alabama and back about 20 years ago, he had a billboard top single song called "Country is Cool" and based on the success of it he toured with a band called Run D.M.C. for a while. Anyways, we run into this freestyle rap group and Newton gets into the mix asking if an "Alabama boy can give it a try." They let him in and he lets loose while the crowd goes wild. Imagine this country boy with a heavy accent going to town - it was great. I'm heading up to the North Shore tomorrow.

I was up at about 4:45 this morning to leave for Hawaii on a business trip. I boarded the plane for the second leg of the trip in Minneapolis and was greeted with Mai-tai's - for an eight hour flight, that's either a good or a bad way to start. I used my miles to upgrade to first class and it turned out to be a great call. The plane was a widebody DC10-30 and the first class section was huge and had the fully reclinable seats with personal tv's - way different than Northwest's so-so first class seating.

I got in around 12:30PM, checked in, spent some time at the beach and met up with one of the guys on my team, Newton, who's down here for a different project. My Hilton Honors status paid off and I ended up with a great room at the hotel, overlooking the ocean, with the above view. Will has been spending a fair amount of time out here on a project and his advice to acclimate to the 6 hour time change was to stay up until 10PM (4AM EST) the first night. I can barely make it to midnight on a good day at home, so this should be interesting. I'm getting ready to head out to dinner, so we'll see how tonight goes.

I got my copy of the new Harry Potter book today. I'm 1/4 of the way through it and it's great so far. $29.95 for a billion of these things being sold. What a racket.

I saw this bumper sticker on a car: Tatoos aren't just for sailors and whores anymore.

I snapped these pictures last night of a frog on my window. I'm constantly amazed at the quality and features my Sony DSC-T1 has. I used the close-up mode and took these from about 3 inches away.

Cathie and I went on a date last night to dinner and a movie. Our plan was originally to go to the Mongolian Barbecue in Novi for dinner and then head to a movie. When we got to dinner, we stumbled upon a private vodka tasting party that was going on at the resturant and we got ourselves invited in. They were preimeiring a new Mongolian Vodka and had it there to drink in every way, shape and form - from chilled shots, to martinis and mixed drinks. It's a good Vodka - up there with Absolut, but not quite Grey Goose quality. They had a whole round of appetizers as well, so we hung out, had some drinks, downed some appetizers and scrapped our original dinner plans.

We then went to see War of the Worlds. I was considering not seeing it just because Tom Cruise has seemed so annoying lately that I figured it would sour the enjoyment of the movie. People talked a lot about the special effects blowing them away, but that really didn't strike me. What struck me was that I was on the edge of my seat the whole movie. It was a good movie, not great. The special effects were good, but nothing groundbreaking or earth-shattering. After movies like Star Wars I think it's tough to be amazed anymore. The last movie with effects that amazed me were some animated flicks where you could see each individual hair moving in an individual, realistic way. I contrast that with my four year old Emily who will scream with amazement when we're on a walk and she sees a bird or a bug. You'd think she'd just spotted a dinosaur walking down the street. She gets so excited about the little things. Probably not a bad place to be in life, to still find wonder like that in the world around you.

I worked out with Kirk today at his gym. As usual, he took me through a crazy workout which we worked some healthy competition into, the loser doing extra push-ups. We competed in everything: First person to miss at jump roping, lats person back on the bear-crawl/crab-walks and person who did the most pull-ups. Things degraded into boxing, which is great, except Kirk's an ex-boxer. We put gloves on and he proceeded to pound me as he taught me how to box. I thought I knew, but I had no idea. Great workout, but exhausting.

Last night during Jason's going away party Madeline and Emily came up with the idea to switch rooms, which is no big deal in and of itself. They took it to the next level by wanting to look like each other so that we wouldn't know the difference when we came in to check on them. How might they do this you ask? By cutting their hair to look alike. The story came out in pieces after we found chunks of hair in the bathroom this morning. Emily explained that she got the idea from her imaginary friend because her one imaginary friend cut her other imaginary friend's hair, but he cut it all off. She knew that she shouldn't cut off all of her hair because she knew that'd be wrong. Who says you can't learn anything from the voices inside your head?

During the punishment phase of the whole deal, Madeline angrily said "I wish Adam and Eve had never done bad things, because then I wouldn't have done bad things and gotten a punishment." I was too busy laughing to explain the theological issues with her argument.

I was interviewed today for a profile in our company newsletter. During it, I was asked a few questions that made me think:
1. "What is the most significant thing you've ever done at our company?"
2. "How would your friends describe you?"
3. "What's one word you'd use to describe yourself?"

In the big picture, I'm not sure I've done much that's truly significant other than hiring a bunch of good people. How would my friends describe me? Probably can't list most of those words. How would I describe myself in one word? Right-Handed.

We got back from Iowa and our air conditioning wasn't working and I had no idea why. I looked near the blower and the pipes were covered with ice. I cracked open my "How to fix it yourself" book and followed the troubleshooting stuff in it and I think I actually got it working again! I cancelled my call to the repair-guy and I'm waiting to see if I was right.

Unfortunately, it wasn't fixed in time for Jason Monstrola's going away party last night. Jason is a friend of mine who has quit his job to go and follow his dream to be a bible translator in some far-away country. He's going back to school for linguistics first for 2 1/2 years before he goes out in the field. I see a strange pattern here. Will and Jason both have computer science degrees and have both recently quit their jobs to go back to school and follow the desires of their heart. My degree is in computer science as well. Hmmmm.

My sister doesn't wear much makeup. I'm not sure she wears any, but I never really noticed. My cousin Jodie is a Mary Kay consultant and convinced Susan to do a makeover. The girls headed into the bathroom and dolled my sister up like a $2 hooker. I'm sure my sister will appreciate me posting these pictures.
BEFORE:

On Sunday we hung out at the hotel in the morning and went swimming. The water park in the hotel was fantastic. It had this giant contraption that you had to traverse in order to get to the water slide at the top. Along the way there were probably a hundred different booby traps that would soak people down below. At the very top was this 1000 gallon bucket that would dump every 10 minutes on the kids below, which they loved. It had three water slides all together along with a zero entry pool with a slide that Emily played in most of the day. They had great life guards all over the place that they kept on their toes. They had these plastic babies that the supervisors would carry around and suddenly chuck these things in the water to test the life guards response time. Jon and I followed thse guys around watching this for a while, laughing our heads off at how strange this was and how seriously they took it. Jon and I had my cousin Kurt grab one of the babies and chuck it in the water slide and sat back and watched the fireworks. Lots of fun.

After the pool, we went to a family mass at the church in town. From there we took the kids on a tour around town. We hung out at the Kramer farm and went for a long hayride around the farms and through the country side. From there we went to Connie and Jim's place so the kids could ride horses. They have 30+ horses and a bunch of steers their kids use for competitive team roping. Emily was cautioned about touching the electric fence, so what does she do? She touches the fence. She learned the hard way. We went back that night, swam some more and then the fellas hit the casino before calling it a night.

The next morning we got up, swam (someone pooped in the pool, so we had to clear out), packed and headed out around 11ish. We got back from Iowa late Monday night around 10:30. It was a long, long drive. We made it out in about 8.5 hours, back in 10.5.

I've posted all of the pictures of the trip here.

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Today was the Kurt family reunion. There were four generations of Kurt's out at the Kramer farm, where I used to visit as a kid. We went for a hayride, drank Busch Light beer and hung out and traded some great stories. I learned about how my Uncle Oscar drank a little too much and got lost in a corn field and how my late Grandpa Kurt used to ride a motorcycle. I saw couins I hadn't seen in a lot of years and got to tell my kids stories about the time my I spent in Bellevue as kids.

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That yellow spot on Susan's shirt isn't mustard. Little Bender let loose on Susan during the latest picnic stop.

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We pulled into Iowa about 2p, CST after missing our 5:30am alarms and getting up at 7 instead. We caughr up with the rest of the family caravan outside of Rockford, IL. We stopped a while later to picnic before we got the Great Wolf Lodge. The kids were good for the 9 hour drive.

I went in today to Triad to have Kirk take a look at my rotator cuff and see what I'd done to it. It's nothing too bad and he gave me some exercises to work on it. On a whim, I thought I'd have do a Body Mass Index (BMI) reading on me, since I'd dropped weight recently. In the spirit of Will's full disclosure, I normally hover right around 203 and I've been eating like crap over the last 8 weeks. Recently, I've dropped down to 201, so I figured I was doing something right. I'm at a BMI of about 25 right now. When I'm working out hard and eating right, I'm normally around 17, with my lowest ever being 12.5.

We went to Island Lake State Park last night for a picnic and brought Riley with us. There's a lake off the beaten path that you have to hike out to, which we did, picnic lunch and all. The kids and dog played in the water for a while chasing minnows, having a great time. There were these beautiful, huge clouds rolling in from the distance that eventually turned into a big thunderstorm, but were awesome to watch in the distance.

Check out this elvis mosaic someone did using sticky notes on flickr.com

Check out these these pictures of my Beth's sister's house after a tree went through it. Ouch. Right through the middle of the bed.

Madeline's is having her brithday party tonight, having 4 of her 7 year old friends over for a sleep-over. Cathie started the party at 2:00 this afternoon because they thought they'd be at the beach all day. It rained. Instead they Cathie took the girls to the Hand's On Museum in Ann Arbor and then a couple of our babysitters came over and did makeovers on the girls. The girls are just settling into a movie - I'm sure it'll be a late night. They're getting picked up at 10AM tomorrow. I manage Nate's birthday parties, Cathie manages Madeline and Emily's birthday parties. Seems like a fair deal to me.

Check out this list of American Film Institute's list of top 100 quotes from U.S. movies. It's a pretty exahaustive list across all movies from 1900's on.

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Everytime we go to 7-11 for slurpees, we pass by this granite ststue company with these huge, gaudy statues out front. The kids tell us how badly they want one for our front yard and we laugh. This time, we stopped. For $3,000 you too can have your own lion statue for your house. What a deal!

This is one of the coolest flash games I've seen out there.

I listened to a great message from Mars Hill church by Rob Bell today entitled "The Theology of the Clicks" It's an interesting message where he talks very openly on behalf of the church about their driving forces and their finances. He discusses Mars Hill's philosphy on giving and how for the longest time his belief was that the topic of giving should be avoided because of people's baggage from other churches. Their belief was that as people are transformed by following Jesus, people would just naturally give. He then shares some pretty ugly numbers in terms of giving in West Michigna. Based on the 14 largest churches in the area, the average giving is around $1,500/per person. Mars Hill is at about $500/person. Interesting. The rest of the message deals with what it looks like to be transformed as you follow Jesus, click by click.

You can download MP3 here: Money Sunday: A Theology of the Clicks or click here to listen to it online. You can see a list of all of the messages here.

We had our annual Kurt Family July 4th party at my parents yesterday. It was a little sad without Jon and Beth there, but we had fun none-the-less. My mom dressed the grandkids for their annual grandkid picture - you can see the newest edition, little bender, on the end of the picture, belted in place so he doesn't fall out. The best part of these pictures is my mom standing in the background, making the craziest faces and sounds to get the kids to pay attention long enough to snap the picture. The weather went between sun and rain for a while, finishing off with a big thunderstorm. My Dad had just come back from a conference and gave each of the grandkids these all-purpose tools that had a siren, flashlight, alarm clock and radio all-in-one. One common denominator was the naps that all of the guys were able to take at one time or another. The key is finding a good spot to hide - under a bed, behind a couch - regardless of how comfortable it is, just so one of the other siblings or my dad can't find you and send the kids after you. I didn't hide well enough, and my Dad sent all of the kids into the room with the dumb all-in-one tools on siren mode to wake me up. It poured for a while in the evening, and we figured the township fireworks were going to be cancelled and left around 8.

You can see the pictures for the Kurt Family July 4th Picnic here.